After “quitting” on the air on Wednesday, Matt Siegel was back on “Kiss 108” WXKS-FM Medford/Boston’s “Matty In The Morning” on Thursday.
Siegel explained what happened yesterday from his perspective in his first break this morning, “I stumbled upon a topic that was a sensitive one with Demi Lovato and I was upset with her and her statement about the pronouns. I thought it was ridiculous and I talked about it. I told jokes thats what we do. It’s a joke show. Anyway here’s the point. So when I was on a roll and feeling like the old Matty on the air that’s when I got the call to stop talking about it and I just snapped. I said I just can’t be here anymore.”
“Subsequently, of course I talked to my wife at length about it and I talked with the company and the company told me that, they basically said please don’t quit. And they said that I have total support from them and freedom to say what I want. So I kind of won that battle. My wife said I’m not ending my career blaming Demi Lovato. So I’m here.”
He continued trying to turn the situation yesterday into one of censorship, “If we live in a world where we can’t say what we want to say. I’m not talking about swearing and obvious things we don’t do on the radio, but within the traditional radio boundaries if I can’t say what I’m thinking, then I don’t want to do it anymore,”
Matty stands by his comments about Demi Lovato
He says of the company (@iHeartRadio @Kiss108) – “they basically said, please don’t quit and they said that I have total support from them and freedom to say what I want.” pic.twitter.com/Fzp259ervM
— Mike Saccone (@mikesacconetv) May 20, 2021
INSTANT INSIGHT:It was very obvious from Siegel’s comments immediately after the show that he wasn’t going anywhere. But his return this morning may end up causing more issues for Siegel and the station. He threw WXKS-FM Program Director Dylan Sprague under the bus for simply trying to steer Siegel away from saying something offensive to the target audience of the station. While the 71 year old Siegel may not understand the concept of binary and non-binary, many in the core CHR demographic have grown up much more open to the issue. His statement explaining his outburst on Wednesday, and continuing to call Lovato she/her will draw more backlash towards him and potentially station advertisers. If you’re a talent on a CHR, don’t you at least have to understand the audience you speak to and how is Sprague supposed to manage his morning show if Siegel veers into even more worrisome territory in the future?
Original Report 5/20: Did the 40+ year run of Matt Siegel’s “Matty In The Morning” at iHeartMedia CHR “Kiss 108” WXKS-FM Medford/Boston come to an abrupt end today?
During this morning’s show, Siegel stated that he was told by his boss he needed to stop talking about Demi Lovato coming out as non-binary after Siegel said he wasn’t allowed to be “anti-wokeness”. Siegel stated on-air, “It’s not personal, it’s professional. He said he doesn’t want me talking about this. Today I was anti-wokeness and I can’t do that, so basically, what I’m told is, I can talk about light, funny things like where the Jonas Brothers are going to be but I can’t do what I really want to do, which is just be a funny comic and tell it like it is, so I’m ending my portion of the radio show right now. It has been a hell of a run, but I think it’s coming to an end.”
Siegel continued, “Bill and Lisa and Bex and Dom, I’m sorry for putting you in this position but I was told by my boss I cannot talk about what I want to talk about. By the way, it’s a joke the whole binary thing. I don’t care what Demi Lovato does but now we need to worry about you might offend someone so basically I offended right-wing people and now I offended left-wing people. Basically what they want me to do is you know a lightweight show. We have that in the market. We have Mix. We have radio stations that don’t offend anybody. This was the Matty In The Morning Show. The number one radio show in the history of Boston radio. OK! Bigger than Jess Cain, Dave Maynard, Charles Lacquidera, all of the radio giants in Boston. I am the biggest of all time and they said SHUT UP MATT… Stop Talking. Well I hope you’re happy because I just stopped talking. Matty out.”
The station then ran jockless until the end of the morning show at 10:00. The 71-year-old Siegel had been hosting mornings at WXKS-FM since January 1981.
Siegel later told Boston.com that he believes that he will remain with the station. Siegel stated, “You know what’s gonna happen? Around 3 or 4 this afternoon, I’ll go, ‘Wait a minute, am I really walking away from millions of dollars? I don’t really care that much.’ Cooler heads will prevail, I’m sure. They made it very clear that they don’t want me to leave.”
We will continue to update this story as more details become available.